‘T is the noon of the spring-time, yet never a birdIn the wind-shaken elm or the maple is heard;For green meadow-grasses wide levels of snow,And blowing of drifts where the crocus should blow;Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white,On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the light,O’er the cold winter-beds of their late-waking rootsThe frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots;And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps,Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps,Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers,With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowersWe wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south!For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth;For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God,Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod!Up our long river-valley, for days, have not ceasedThe wail and the shriek of the bitter northeast,Raw and chill, as if winnowed through ices and snow,All the way from the land of the wild Esquimau,Until all our dreams of the land of the blest,Like that red hunter’s, turn to the sunny southwest.O soul of the spring-time, its light and its breath,Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life to this death;Renew the great miracle; let us beholdThe stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled,And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of old!Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has lain,Revive with the warmth and the brightness again,And in blooming of flower and budding of treeThe symbols and types of our destiny see;The life of the spring-time, the life of the whole,And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love to the soul!1852.